Carmel Majidi

Professor Carmel Majidi directs the Integrated Soft Materials Lab at CMU, Mechanical Engineering department. Currently, his group is focused on filled-elastomer composites and soft microfluidic systems that exhibit unique combinations of mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties and can function as “artificial” skin, nervous tissue, and muscle for soft robotics and wearables. We are honoured to have him here at HCII to share some exciting work his lab is conducting. It is highly relevant to the ones who are interested in material-driven interfaces, soft matter, flexible and tangible material interaction, and novel fabrication methods.​

Speaker's Bio

Dr. Majidi is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he started as an assistant professor in 2011. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory (2009-2011) and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (2007-2009). His experience in solid mechanics and microfabrication is the foundation of his current research in the emerging fields of soft robotics and active multifunctional materials.

The next generation of autonomous robots, assistive medical devices, and electronics will include systems that are soft, elastically deformable, and adapt their functionality to the changing demands of their operator and environment. Progress depends on new classes of multifunctional materials and soft machines for stretchable electronics, elastomer-based pneumatics, hyperelastic deformation sensing, and reversible shape and rigidity control.

Professor Majidi addresses these emerging challenges through a unique combination of rapid prototyping, soft-lithography microfabrication, and theoretical insights from solid mechanics. This includes innovations in liquid-embedded elastomer electronics (LE3) for stretchable sensors, circuits, and wearable computing.